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Matthew Vella
University stipends are back on the agenda, and the outlook reverberates the fears of unsustainability first outlined by Labour back in 1997. This time round however, it’s the Nationalist government which is taking stipend reform on its shoulders, acknowledging problems it had denied prior to 1998 when it wooed the student vote that had been affected by the cut in stipends by promising to increase stipend levels back to their original state. Education Minister Louis Galea said Government now could not ignore the facts.
Yesterday, the Education Ministry presented a report drawn up by the Higher Education Funding working committee, which effectively lays down the line for a radical revision of the higher education funding system, and one which entertains the possibility of means-testing the stipend, loans, and university fees. This time round however, little is stirring at the University.
The report, drawn up by a team headed by Bank of Valletta chairman-in-waiting Roderick Chalmers, states that the current system of funding post-secondary and tertiary education “has passed its sell-by date and requires radical revision.” The report states that Government has to take a policy decision as to whether it believes that it can continue acting as the sole provider of finance to post-secondary and tertiary education.
Former Education Minister Evarist Bartolo, who piloted the need to reform the funding of higher education, told MaltaToday yesterday he was not remorseful about the decision he had taken back in 1997:
“It clearly shows how the way the Nationalists hid the facts away from the people by refusing to co-operate in the national spirit with the Labour government at the time. Instead it chose to ignore the facts, saying throughout an entire referendum campaign that our finances were on solid ground, when in reality the stipends issue is an example that they are in fact not.”
The Chalmers report has identified the burgeoning pressure of financing students’ education at the expense of pressing needs in the education sector. According to the report, investment in tertiary education is well below EU levels, and a disproportionate amount of the investment is channelled into student support.
Roderick Chalmers yesterday said both the post-secondary and tertiary sectors were under “severe financial pressure,” and that investment in the education sector has been lacking. Problems in various institutions included low budget allocations, with the Junior College barely able to cover its payroll, reducing the spend on books for the University and Junior College libraries to almost zero, budget cuts at MCAST, and a growing student population that has to be catered for by the available finances.
With the student population increasing by 67 per cent over the ten years between 1994 and 2004, Chalmers said the financial allocations extended to the institutions have not kept up with the growing student populations that they are being asked to handle.
“The principal finding in our review is that the key institutions are facing severe financial difficulties. Paradoxically, these difficulties have been brought about not by policy failure, but by policy success,” Chalmers said, naming the stipend and the recognition by Maltese society of the benefits of higher education as two key reasons for the increase in student population.
“However, the successful policy referred to carried in its wake the seeds of its own potential destruction, due to key factors,” he pointed out. “Firstly, using the stipend to encourage participation in higher education is essentially a social policy decision rather than one of education. Malta’s spend on the students maintenance grant does not bring a single cent into tertiary education… Secondly, there has been inadequate linkage between the decision to encourage higher participation and its financial ramifications. Institutions find themselves having to cater for growing populations without a corresponding increase in funding.”
Chalmers said the provision of funding should now follow a ‘formula funding framework’: “If, due to budget and other constraints, the government is unable to provide the institutions with the funds necessary to enable them to provide the correct quality of educational product to their students, then part of the components of the equation will need to be adjusted,” referring to the restriction of courses, student numbers and the limited possibilities of finding finance.
The report however advocated “great caution” about ‘tilting’ the education platform by limiting students to courses through central command. “Historically central bodies have a questionable record in forecasting which subjects will contribute most to the success of a nation… In general, market forces have tended to be a more reliable guide.”
The report added that in order to influence a more streamlined admission of students to oversubscribed courses, the University should consider imposing modest limitations by placing more demanding admission requirements. Another proposal was to provide positive incentives to encourage students to choose subjects where there is a shortage of applicants and a “clear public interest”.
“Realistically, instant overnight solutions are not available,” Chalmers said. “A major reshaping of the higher education landscape will inevitably take some time. On the other hand, and equally realistically, there are very immediate financial problems that require early attention if the position is not to deteriorate further.”
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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